Claudette followed her gaze. “So, it is true. Jon is returning. Those flowers are from Haiti, child. They bring the magic of revolution and death. When Jon consumed them, he tied his soul to Baron Samedi, Lord of Death. He struck a bargain.” She stilled. “Have you consumed it?”
“…Yes.”
“Then you’ve made yourself a willing conduit to Jon.” She paused as if about to say something else but thinking better of it. “And so has your mother.”
“But I did not become like my mother. I’m not comatose. I didn’t—”
“Because you arenotlike your mother!” Claudette snapped. “Not fully. Not completely. Your blood is well suited to Conjurer Root. To death magic.” She stopped herself from saying more. “Go home, little Laveau. And if you want my advice: Pack your things and leave the city at once. From the talk I hear, things are going to hell quickly, in a matter of days. An Inquisitor walks among us.”
Oh, that Ree knew well enough. “My mother needs me.”
She balked. “Listen to me. Marie Laveau needs no one. Save yourself, little girl. While you still can. Now go, before I force you out.”
“What is it you aren’t telling me?”
Claudette stared at her for a long moment, green eyes blazing with contemplation. “You have always known you were different, didn’t you?” she whispered at last. “Wicked, they call you.” Her eyes flickered over Ree. “But I suppose no more wicked than your holy mother. At least you keep no mask.”
“I have no need. People know what I am well enough.”
At this, Claudette smiled. Begrudgingly. But a smile, nonetheless.
“The question is, doyou?” She let the question hang betweenthem, a suggestion that made Ree nervous. She took a long inhale from her cigarette, then stamped out the rest of it in the dish. “Your mother was a liar.”
She could be at times. They all could.
“She lied to me too,” Ree said. “But she was still our Quarter Queen. Which means”—Ree held her dark gaze—“we have a duty to protect her. Both of us. Which is why I am here. I can’t feel her anymore. I can’t channel her fully. It’s like our connection is…dying.”
“Do you know the true reason why you cannot fully channel your mother without interference?” Claudette waited, and Ree shook her head. “Because the connection to your father is only getting stronger.”
Father.
“Yes, child. The wicked conjurer is your father,” Claudette said. “There’s another influence over you, Marie Laveau the Second. Deep down, you’ve always known, haven’t you? Surely, you must have felt it? That dark thing living inside of you, the one your mother always tried to stamp back down.”
Haven’t you?What did the nuns whisper at her back?Marie Laveau the Second, the wicked, wicked daughter.But now she knew. It was Jon’s wickedness they saw when the city gazed upon her. Jon’s wickedness they remembered.
And yet, her mother had never told her. She’d shared everything else with Ree, every spell, every parlor trick, every long-lost ritual. She divulged to her the secrets of the gods, the other women Baron Samedi had taken and bedded outside of his wife, Maman Brigitte. The scores of children born from these little dalliances. The deals Papa Legba might easily bestow upon those he favored, the swift punishment that would damn those he did not. Marie had shared the fickle whims of the loa with her daughter, each secret sin. But never her own. No, she’d kept those stowed away inside, and if she had any heart left, Ree supposed, she’d guard that too. Her fierce mother, revered queen, Voodoo Priestess, and hypocrite.
“The truth is, I cannot help you. If Marie is consumed with Conjurer Root, then she is tied up with the likes of death magic beyond my abilities. Beyondeveryone’s.There are stories, whispers that sayMarie Laveau banished Jon to the first realm of the dead, to the Veil. If your mother consumed Conjurer Root, then Jon must be using it to hold part of Marie’s soul there with him as well. And the only two people to have successfully practiced Veil magic in New Orleans are Marie”—she took a stilted breath—“and Jon.”
“Then how do I learn it?” asked Ree.
“By turning to the past, of course,” said Claudette. “If you harbor any hope of saving Marie, then you best learn the forbidden magic Jon taught her. And you must learn it quickly.”
Ree unfolded her hand, staring down at the strange, dark little flower. She didn’t know the muddied history between her mother and Jon, only the bits and pieces she’d seen from her mother’s mind. But now she knew that the only way forward was to go backward in time, that the answers she sought could be found only in Marie’s veiled past. Answers her mother had kept so carefully hidden all these years.
But one thing was for certain. She would stop at nothing to learn the truth.
Chapter Fourteen
Marie
Less than a week had passed since Mardi Gras, the spelled wine, and already scores of men had died. The plague ships were becoming full, as they had during the terror yellow fever had set upon the city some years before. The bodies were piling up, the crematories were working overtime, and the whole city billowed with black smoke as if the sky rained ash. It was all the work of Voodoo. The strangest kind, one she had never practiced herself, but it mattered not. Jon was one of them.
“We are under attack, Marie.” Sanite Dede sat on her throne, peering into a basin of water in her lap. “I will not have a war at the end of my reign.”
Marie stood before her, readying herself to hear her latest marching orders. “What would you have me do, my queen?”
“Stamp it out now, before the flames become too large to quell. They believe us responsible for these plagues.” Sanite lifted her gaze from her scrying, a certain sharpness in her eyes. The water had been collected from Lake Pontchartrain near La Sirene’s shrine and consecrated in her name. She was Sanite’s patron goddess, whose venerable blessing made the Quarter Queen’s foresight strong.
